


Spatial-temporal disruption, obviously

by Petra



Category: DCU - Comicverse, Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-16
Updated: 2011-08-16
Packaged: 2017-10-23 22:26:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Annie is the victim of a specific form of spatial-temporal disruption.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spatial-temporal disruption, obviously

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://eisen.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://eisen.dreamwidth.org/)**eisen** on the grounds that sometimes you need a bit of crossover f/f.

"You're the victim of a specific form of spatial-temporal disruption, obviously," Oracle says confidently, after all the tests she can think of.

Annie sits down in the chair Oracle had told her to sit in, half because she doesn't know those words in that order and half because she's shaky. She knows better than to go to the top of one of the towering buildings, here in Gotham or anywhere else, but she can't help thinking of it. She's been thinking of it since she woke up in a tangle of cables and wires, snared under Oracle's desk like a fly in a spider's cocoon for no reason anyone can come up with.

And if Oracle can't find a reason, there isn't one.

"Can you send me home?" Annie asks, and makes a note that she has some apologizing to do when she gets there, if she gets there. Spatial-temporal disturbance. At least she doesn't think she's in a coma.

"When Doctor Fate gets back from the seventh circle, probably." Oracle taps her fingers on her keyboard while she talks, doing something important. "Until then, you'll need to keep busy."

"All right," Annie says, and laughs. It hurts her throat less than crying would. "No rest for the wicked. No vacations in Gotham."

Oracle frowns at her. "If I believed in pure coincidence, I'd send you somewhere sunny. But something dumped you practically in my lap, so you must be useful. Show me what you can do."

The computer system can do things all by itself that Annie can only dream of, but she gets the hang of it after a few hours, of the searches at her fingertips and the knowledge spreading out in front of her. "I've got the hang of it now. What should I do?" she asks Oracle when she's sure she can work with the machine without turning it into a sparking pile of slag.

"Check the whereabouts of all of these people for me."

A list scrolls across her screen, people with names like the Clock King, the Calendar King, the Time Wizard. "Do you think one of them is capable of this? Who calls themselves the Calendar King?"

Oracle shrugs, her smile wry. "We'll find out."

Most of them are in prison, one place or another. Some of them are dead. "If you were really the Master of Space and Time, how could anyone put you in jail?" Annie asks, while she watches a little movie of a man sleeping in his cell. He has painted clocks on all the walls.

Oracle wheels over to her. "Because you're not." Her fingers brush Annie's, and there's the spark that won't destroy the machinery, the tingle of human presence. Annie had noticed it a little, before, when Oracle was helping her get out of the mass of cables.

Now it's more so. "Then he's not, any more than I am."

"Mistress of Space and Time?" Oracle asks, but she's teasing.

The way she smiles at Annie makes Annie think of kissing her, of kissing other people with that sardonic twist to their lips. "Not even close," she says, and she is decades from home and an ocean away besides.

And the searches she ran for all of the people she knows--all of them--showed that none of them are alive, here in 2008. All her promises have been canceled by a disturbance she doesn't understand.

She's far enough from home that she's achingly lonely and completely terrified, and she's been holding onto Oracle's certainty that everything would work out.

Now she holds onto Oracle's shoulder for a moment and kisses her, to see what happens.

Oracle sighs and kisses her back, sweet and firm at once, running her fingers through Annie's hair for a moment before she turns her face away. "I doubt this is what the universe had in mind when it sent you."

"We've been working all day. Nobody can think for this many hours straight, not me, not you, not--anyone." Annie's not sure what time it is inside or out, and she's not sure what time it was when she left home either. All she knows is that she's exhausted "Maybe--just for a moment--you could, we could relax."

Oracle laughs, the most open, whole-hearted emotion Annie's seen from her yet. "Now that would take a rift in the time-space continuum."

*

There are not many people whose laps Annie will sit on peaceably. It's all right with Oracle because she's a woman and however clear she is that Annie's not to make allowances for her, the fact is that she's only got feeling partway down her thighs. Strolling in the park goes differently, and so does sex.

If Oracle wants to play "Don't make a sound" with Annie's thighs spread across hers, she'll pay it back later, trying to focus on something she says is important while Annie plays with her nipples until she loses her head entirely.

Fair's fair.  



End file.
